An Adventure in Spirit and Road: Canada and Alaska, Part 1

Running the Symbolic Gauntlet, Part 1

The morning after Britney quit her job of 17 years—minus one long-ago brief pause to work another job in the same industry—on the late morning of August 3rd, we packed up the Prius and headed north, away from Lompoc and towards Portland, Oregon.

We did not yet know we’d be facing Canadian customs at the border, worried because of my “criminal” past. (DUI from 2003. More on this later.)

We were planning to head up for a week or two to Portland to sign the papers on the new multi-unit we’d bought on contingency and which was supposed to close immediately after the sale of my house in the Bay Area on 8/6.

Things, as often the case with us, didn’t work out exactly according to plan.

I can’t reiterate, first off, how big of a deal this moment is for us, but especially for Britney. She’s lived all her life in the small agricultural town of Lompoc. Most of her family is there. She’s very close with her clan. Her 18-year-old son is here. She was born in the hospital across the street from her house (now a recovery rehab center), as were her father and her son. She has a long, complex history in this place.

And yet, for a long time, she’s literally been saying that, come 2024, when her son was 18 and out of high school, she wanted to move to Spain. So, here we were. We’re moving to Spain in January.

Anyway, we headed north, that’s the point. Damn it felt good to speed along Highway 101 and get some distance between us and Lompoc. As many of you know, I’ve never been the biggest fan of this town. Being what I call an “intellectual,” pretentious-speak for a deep, sensitive man who reads and writes for a living, Lompoc isn’t exactly the most culturally intriguing or sophisticated town. It’s got natural beauty, I’ll give it that. But lot’s of places have that.

This is why we’re moving to Spain: Because both of us want to experience adventure, to see the world outside of America. (And we have traveled a lot between us, including to Morocco and Thailand over the past year, but never lived abroad.) Selling my house and buying a multi-unit in Portland would enable us to live securely in Spain, along with renting out Britney's house in Lompoc.

My agent in Portland was my close friend of 25 years. We’d known each other since the punk rock days in high school and had maintained a complex, deep, sometimes strained friendship since sophomore year. She’d left our hometown around 2009 and had been in Portland ever since. She’d become an agent. She was absolutely fantastic, helping us find the perfect multi-unit for our rental/investment needs.

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The first night we ended up camping in Pan Toll Ranger Station campground (site #14) in Mill Valley. Probably half a dozen times or more over the years I’d parked in the lot there and hiked, but I’d never stayed in the campground. It was lovely. We got in around 6pm. We made food, using our MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat); all you needed was hot water and 15 minutes (made for backpacking). We read. Shafts of deepening sunlight beamed through the leaves of redwood trees. It was mostly quiet, minus the kids 50 yards below us with their busy, overworked single mom.

The next morning we were off, back on 101. We drove all day and ended up heading east on Highway 199 from Crescent City, near the Oregon border. All of this brought back nostalgic memories. Mostly of hitchhiking along 101, coastal California and Oregon, and especially through Arcata, Humboldt, and Highway 199.

It took me back to 2006, 2009, thumbing around in my twenties, alone, happy, unburdened, free as a bird. I remember that feeling of being on the road, like Kerouac, like Chris McCandless, of having nothing to lose but whatever dead-end job I had at the time, and whatever woman I was superficially seeing. It was a pungent, fertile time of physical movement and emotional self-discovery, a time when I felt alone and detached from my family, from society, from everything but the twisting road, books, writing and raw, untrammeled life experience. I specifically recall meeting two young Humboldt pot “trimmers” along 199 circa summer 2006; we hitched together south down to Arcata, staying with an old high school buddy of mine.

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We camped that night near Cave Junction, Oregon, just past the state line, off 199. A little road off the main highway which was filled with gigantic, truck-thick ancient redwood trees; these natural whales covered us in shade like buildings in Manhattan. Britney—understandably—freaked out when spotting a rattlesnake right by where we parked the car at the little empty campground. I smiled, assuring her we’d be ok. I watched the snake as is slithered across the dirt, turned, retreated, and ducked under a rock, never to return. I told her snakes were cold-blooded and didn’t come out at night. We had cell service so we googled it. I turned out to be wrong; they do come out at night, especially when it’s hot, which it was.

Then she worried about bears. Old pieces of garlic bread had been left at the site we chose; I kicked it away from the site but of course bears are tempted by anything with a scent. Food, mostly.

In the end we slept in the back of the Prius with the back open. I put our big green container of food and other things into it inside the tent, at our site, away from us. We slept terribly. It was hot and muggy. In the morning we checked the tent: All was fine. We’d survived the night. (I knew we would.)

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We got into Portland the next day around 1pm. Britney had set up a stay at the Econo Lodge downtown on SW 4th, down the block from PSU (Portland State University). We showered and got clean. The shower felt good but a big part of me regretted it: I loved the feeling of dirt on my feet, being surrounded by nature, smelling my own mucky scent. I liked feeling like an uncivilized animal, feral and organic. A part of the earth. I’d always felt this way, ever since my dad took me backpacking for the first time in the mid 1990s.

We’d already decided to keep driving after Portland. The plan was to drive to Fairbanks, Alaska. Why not? Neither of us had ever been to Alaska, and we were curious. We were going to close on two homes. It was a celebration. Life is short. Life’s an adventure. So that was the plan.

But there was one potential problem.

Canada.

*Part 2 coming soon!